Fundamental Trade Items

Now with a better understanding of some of the factors that you must consider when selecting your item(s), the lingering question is: which items can I use?

Our Merchanting.GEUpdate.com side provides an arsenal of data in order to help make your merchanting item choices much easier. Some of the information on these pages can be a bit confusing, so we will simplify it for you here. You should start by clicking on a skill of interest. For demonstration purposes, we will be using information found on the Herblore page that is located on the left-side navigation bar. Upon clicking the link, a page full of item images and informative tables will appear. One of the first such tables is 'Herb Cleaning,' which describes the profitability of (literally) cleaning herbs from their grimy to clean form (only takes one click).

(You may click on the graphic to enlarge it for a better view).

The information here is divided into 6 columns. Each column is explained below in numerical order, followed by a graphic:

Level - This describes the specific skill level required to perform the task (not really important since you are going to be merchanting the item). This is the 'usability' factor described previously.

Clean herb - This column contains the finished product of performing the task (herb cleaning), alongside its picture and current price. If the price is decreasing in value, the price is red; if it's green, it's increasing in value.

Grimy herb - This is the 'raw' form of the material that is being processed. Since we're discussing herb cleaning, this would be the herb that a skiller would buy to gain experience points by cleaning the herb. Simple enough. Again, the listed price is red if the price declined during the last grand exchange update. It will appear green if it increased during the same update on record.

Profit - This is the profit that is gained for cleaning the herb. For instance, if you have level 3 herblore, buying a grimy guam for 95 GP and clicking it to transform it into the clean form, which you then sell for 117 GP each, would yield a 22 GP profit; meager, but it is better than losing money for the same experience points. When this column is green for an item, performing the task will yield a profit; when it's red, performing the task will cost you money.

Remember: the prices that this table displays are not the current market prices, the grand exchange price is the average of yesterday's trades. It is possible to buy the herb cheaper and sell it for more, thus yielding a higher return. The rate of profit is an important factor for skillers when they are choosing to raise a skill level; they want the most experience for the least cost. If something is profitable, they will generally choose that path (which will only cost them time) versus doing something that will cost them money (and time).

XP - This is the number of experience points gained for performing the task.

1 XP profit - This is return (profit) divided by the number of experience points for performing the task. This number makes it easy to figure out how much a certain level will cost when the skill is performed. For example, if you need 50,000 herblore experience points to achieve your next level, cleaning guams would yield 450,000 GP profit as well as the necessary experience points. Conversely, cleaning spirit weeds would cost you 500,000 GP for the same amount of experience points. Granted, the difference in in time required is quite stark.

All of the skill pages follow this same format. At this point, you should pick a skill that you're interested and take a look at the numbers for something that catches your eye. As we head towards the analysis now (and the actual items), we're going to stick with herblore for simplicity sake. But we definitely encourage you to be creative and be on the lookout for items that other merchants are overlooking!